Christine's mask
by SunlightShining
Summary: Don't know where this one came from. BookALW influences, AU for noncannonness. Christine finds a way to get Erik to unmask himself. Nosey Christine, Darkfluff, CE, rated for descriptivness and very minor swearing, Unmasked Erik is love.


Okay, I must first say that this story is WILDLY au. It wasn't originally intended as such, but I cant seem to get the characters to fit into their cannons!!

For some reason in this fic, Christine is living wih Erik i his lair, but still thinks of him as a tutor and teacher untill this point. Raoul is somehow amazingly not involved. I havn't read the Kay novel so I dont know how this fits in with it at all and I actually went mostly inspired by phanfics and the musical. I'm sorry if they are a little OOC. Erik is based off of the book version. I thought that although stage-phantom is wonderful and elegant, book Erik was much more dramatic. His looks werent downplayed to society's standards. Anyway, I'm ranting. Mostly I tried hard to keep my pacing here...I have a big problem with pacing. Well...here it is. Christine's plan. Dont try to cannon-ify it, it's mostly a stream of thought but in third person. Okay. I'm stopping. Bye.

PS: rated only for potentially disturbing descriptions (Like anyone that young really reads this kind of story...shutting up now

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Hide his face huh? insist that she couldn't look upon it that her constitution might be so weak hmm? Well, then, she would give him a taste of his own medicine. She would give _him_ something to wonder about. She was positive her little game would pay off. She was sure this would win his strong heart over. So for hours one night she worked at it, sitting up in the bed he provided for her. Until she had heard his musical work start and stop several times. He was being moody. Christine didn't care.

She remembered:

_How can you want to see me...No. I will not have your eyes look upon me. I will not have them tainted so. It is better in this way. I do not wish to see the look of horror you might have on your face play out in my mind every time I look upon you angel. No. I will not remove my mask for you. Not yet, not ever._

In all fact, he had been speaking to himself. Playing out what he would say if she were to ask him to remove his mask. She had asked him before, but as no more than a passing thought. Now the curiosity that damned eve to an eternity of womanly shame and made Pandora pry her way into releasing all the evil of the world plagued her ever-wandering mind. Her fingers worked endlessly with what materials she had. A knife from the kitchen, an old piece of board, some fabric cut from an unused sheet...It was nearly perfect. She fixed it to her face, wishing that her captor had a mirror in this blasted house. But alas, she had to trust her mask-making skill.

She couldn't decide why she had devised such a wry punishment for the angel of the dark. It was as conflicting as the emotions she faced in him. But still, she was like a child and a bitter maid at the same time. She wanted to spite him, to spur him and anger him but also to laugh with him at her foolishly clever game. Deep down, she knew he wanted more than anything to absorb her beauty with his eyes...and now he wouldn't be able to. The denial that he gave her day in and out when he covered himself would hand back to him. She stepped from her room, dressed for the day, but something struck Erik as different. It took two looks to realize what was going on.

"My God, Christine...where did you get that...that isnt one of mine." He said, somewhere between horrified and curious.

"It's just something, but Angel, you mustn't look beneath it, for then you might be so emotional that your eyes would always look at me differently." She playfully spat at him. Rage seemed to course through him then subsided as quickly as a candle is blown out. He marched up to her, close enough to hear his breath from behind his own mask.

"So this is to be the game. I guarantee you if it is a match of masks you want I shall win." He said, his voice almost causing Christine to wince with it's growl. He retreated for now, moving to another place to think.

-

Only a day passed before Erik's patience wore so thin. He had gone from anger to pleading in the course of twelve hours.

"Christine, Angel, remove it please. I want to see the pretty features I love with so much of my soul."

"Why should I let what you think is pretty sway my judgment of myself. After all, the wise say love is most blind, and therefor cannot see flaws, so I must hide those flaws from love so as not to be lying." She replied cryptically. This drew another quiet growl from the deep of his throat.

-

That day Erik had played no music what so ever. He was so frustrated that Christine was so near and yet so distant that he felt like he stood by a wall.

She smirked under her full-face mask. It was working, he was breaking. Soon he would understand.

She remembered:

_'His skin is thin, yellowed and greened like rotting meat and stretched over his skull like a sheer of cloth...they say he has a hole in the center of that disgusting pool of features that serves for a nose. What a nose! His lips, I hear, are like limp pieces of rot, hanging and jiggling. The sides of his cheeks, especially on one side sag too, and blister. But it isnt just the ghosts horrid face that haunts the dark places. His whole body is once dead and now alive somehow by devil's magic. His hands are as boned as a skeletal cat and as icy as the caves in winter. Cuts from his masochistic desires leave nasty scars on his whole body. Beatings he inflicts upon himself to keep his rage alive so he may kill...' _that was when Christine stopped listening. It was true, she liked ghost stories...but it was too much to take that kind of abuse thrown on to someone she felt as though she knew.

Christine's tutor was a fool if he believed she had never heard the stage-hand's murderous rumors about his appearance. She had heard the old fairy tales made to frighten children from wandering the dangerous sets and hallways at night. And still she wanted to test herself against the source of these wicked words. She wanted to set herself against them and prove to this man she was not a coward, nor unjust nor without compassion.

Meg had spoken of him once, too, repeating her mother's description. "_Both ugly beyond compare and strangly Erik was beautiful more than anyone. His soul must be strong and his art bled through his torn features.' that's what my mama told me" _

And now as they sat in silence in front of the fire Erik's frustration was clearly visible on his every motion. Christine was winning.

She knew she was playing with fire in a most dangerous way.

He knew she was playing with him.

"I can bear it no longer!" Erik finally wailed. "remove that cursed object from your face...you need it not!" He cried, leaping into hysterics. He cried then, suddenly. "Please, Christine you mock me! You know not what it is to HAVE to wear the mask. You know not how it tortures me to think you might feel right now what i feel behind that piece of cold white."

"And it tortures me not, monsieur? Have I not suffered your tantrums? Have I not let you have your way with my heart, tugging me to sympathy one minute and rage the next? May I not be rewarded??" She responded, her voice cold and distant. A perfect masking of the fear that trembled beneath the surface. A fear not of seeing his face, but of his temper that might attack her for what she asked.

"There is no more terribly unfair reward than to be forced to set eyes upon the damned." He replied, coming to his knees before her chair.

"I will never remove my mask then, if you will not let me express myself to you; The man whom I adore for giving me my passion and learning me my maturity. If I cannot express my love and my unconditional compassion than I will never express anything to you. You will live with a masked woman who lives with a masked man! Let nothing more pass between us from now forth unless it be song, which to itself is a mask of the voice, or the collapsing of BOTH our masks you damned man." She said, building herself up to a defiant rage before dashing to her room and slamming the door.

--

Hours later Erik creaked the bedroom door open, hopeing to cheat on the little game Christine insisted on playing with his fragile state. Much to his dismay she slept with the wood-and-fabric mask firmly in place over her features. He cursed silently, unwilling to force his dead hands close enough to her face to remove it.

--

It had been a day! Only one day since his angel decided to torture him so. One day and he was already breaking under her feminine wiles. Woe was him! He frayed the fabric on the edge of the sofa as he waited one again by the fire for her to rise.

And rise she did. She wore different clothes, but to his disappointment the same mask. But as promised yesterday, she said no words, not sending even so much as a glance until when three hours had passed and they moved to the organ to play and sing.

The mask muffled her voice when she sang, making it painful for Erik to hear. Too much to bear, though he could easily bear so much physical pain. Finally he let the note ring sour and jumped up so quickly the bench toppled over, making Christine jump several inches.

"If this is to be your fate then look upon me damned woman, deny me no longer your face which with the rest of you belongs solely to me!" He ranted. "I care not if it is a face distorted in fear of my own, as long as it is a face that is yours!"

"Monsieur I am glad you finally made your choice. But we are to do this like fair playing children. Close your eyes. I will know if they are closed or open...I have become accustomed to finding them because they are the only thing I can see of you. Then I will take mine off. This will be my show of good faith and so that I may see fully everything that you seem so ashamed of. But you may not open your eyes then, first you must take off your mask too. That is so that you may not cheat me monsieur. Then and only then may you open your eyes to see my face. And then we will know if it will contort in fear or bend in pity or flush with love." Erik scoffed at the last one but stifled it, fearing his angle would torture him longer if she though he did not take this seriously. "If you do not abide by these rules my fair-playing boy, the consequences will not be to your liking." She threatened. Something in her confident, well-rehearsed tone told him she was dead serious.

So there it was, ten seconds that lasted longer than ten years might as he reluctantly closed his eyes. He immediately felt the sting of Christine's gaze on his eyelids, concentrated to be positive he did not peek. He heard her rustle and mustered every bit of heart in him to remain blind.

"Now you..." Came her voice, but it was soft this time. It was only her heart that played in that tune of her voice.

He brought his hands up, blind as he was forced to be, and hooked them onto the corners of the mask. He inhaled, as if diving into an icy pool of water, and pulled it away quickly. He winced as soon as the cold underground air hit his now exposed features, not to mention the full fire of Christine's gaze upon his hideousness. It was all over now, the masking, the lie...everything. He couldn't open his eyes. He didn't even hear her move; his mind was so reeling from the reality he had let himself be tricked into. Now would come that fateful moment.

In his nightmares (when he slept) a demon would steal his precious mask, and while he was wailing for it, Christine would find him and be fearful of him. In his few good dreams (the ones he usually woke up from wishing he would die that he might sleep forever) Christine would come forward and touch the putrid flesh that hung from his jaw and lips with a sweet, motherly and loving caress.

She reached out and felt the face of the angel who had burned in hell so long that his nose had come clean off in the heat, and his features had burned and melted like wax. She reached her fingers out with no judgment, tracing the outline of popping veins, marred flesh...festering infected lacerations...The missing nose that so often disgusted Erik whenever he seemed to gaze into it's endless depths. In that dream she did not wretch in her throat like women so often did when seeing him. She did not faint at the horrific ugliness. She did not scream and move to strike him. She simply would explore to her curiosities contentment, fearlessly and without pity.

Erik immediately believed he was only dreaming, his eyes clenched tight enough to give him a headache. He didn't want to loose this dream though, she was so much more real in this one than ever before and he believed that if he opened his eyes it would dissipate and he would find himself asleep on the ground next to his organ. He wished he could die, and then live in this dream forever.

--

Christine had been waiting with baited breath. This was the moment she had been working up to. This was when she would be the most daring. It was quick, like removing a bandage, and the mask that held so much weight fell away from the man who was everything to her. It was a strange sight to behold. In her heart Christine felt almost guilty for the lack of emotion the 'face' brought out in her. The face that earned so much hatred meant almost nothing to her aching heart. It was what happened next that brought out the feelings she hadn't expected. She stepped the few paces between then, watching him continue to cringe long after she told him he could open his eyes.

When she drew near to him, his face was so morbidly fascinating she couldn't help but explore it with her curious fingers. She wanted to know what it felt like, if it was warm or cold...if it would feel...nasty, deathlike? Papery? Soft? Once more like a child she reacted.

Her thin fingers began at the bottom of his head,rolling them over each new unusual deformity with a warm and gentle touch, She felt him begin to shake under the stress of his unending flinch and she decided to help him to sit but not cease her exploration for his sake.

She stood before him now as he sat on the side of the bench he had toppled. She wanted so badly to make herself okay with every single part of him. She longed to accept him more than any other person. She longed and loved for him so much that she wanted to meld into him and become one with his being, marred flesh and hallowed body altogether. She settled for trying her best to make him feel like she was accepting each tiny piece of his face. She skipped exploring his lips, which were a raw red color and hung with a torn-flesh edge on one side. She skipped up to his missing nose, perhaps the most often mentioned feature that compared him to a corpse. The hole really wasnt that big on a close inspection. Air rushed in and out of it as Erik drew fearful raspy breaths, his heart no doubt racing. It was like someone had melted away the tip of his nose far enough back that he was left with the outline of a nose and one huge nostril.

The next thing her careful fingers found was his cheekbones. They were coated in puffed skin and scars. On one side his cheek itself had a large piece of flesh missing, almost as if it had been carved out by a cruel spoon and then allowed to scar over. Tears began to rush down Christine's cheeks. When she couldn't bear holding it back she let herself sniff a little and her tears patter against the stony floor. She realized in that moment that almost half of his disfigurement came long after birth. It mush have been given to him by the world. Scars were not something you were born with, at least not this kind.

While her mind was thinking this, her hands and eyes were acting on their own, taking this moment to drink in what she may never be allowed to see again. She now noticed that instead of flinching fearfully, Erik was following her every tracing motion now with his head, as if he were sleeping and dreaming, purring softly like a cat that rubs it's face against your hand in affection. Finally she reached it. The point at which her heart could take no more restraint. She knelt before him and leaned in, pressing her lips into his malformed ones.

---

Her hands had floated away from his face while his eyes still closed. The dreams never lasted this long, he must have fallen asleep in a good pose.

The next thing that happened startled Erik so badly that he woke up as well as leaped to his feet. A pair of lips had come into contact with his. HIS lips. His ugly, nasty, disgusting lips. His golden eyes shot open, staring down at Christine a few feet below him. She rose sharply and put on hand behind his jaw, the other on his waist to keep him from trying to run.

"Please...I'm almost done exploring everything..." She said, imploringly. She too was almost in a trance. His eyes grew wider than they ever had, his missing eyebrows raised in surprise and fear. His body was reacting now to his instinct to hide his face from her. It slowly dawned on him as she waited...

She had really been here this whole time. The soreness in his rear from sitting on the side of a wooden stool told him that. She had really been the one touching him, and he had been too busy convincing himself he was dreaming to really feel it. He was filled with a slight regret, but it was quickly put aside as he tried to pull away.

"Please i...i dont want you to have to...Christine I know it isn't possible...this cannot be pleasant to...why are you looking at me?" He finally stammered. He had started four sentences and none of them had worked.

"It _is_ pleasant to me...only this time, kiss me back, and it will be perfect." She whispered, her warm breath a rare and welcome feeling on what felt like raw flesh. Without much more consent than a blink of the eye her lips were on his again. A couple of pecks, then she deepened the touch. She took a little bit of his lower lip and flitted her tongue across it, sending shivers up the man's spine and doing things to his body and soul that hadn't been done for a very very long time.

He himself was almost more repulsed at her tolerance of his sick deformity than she seemed to be. If he wasn't mistaken as he glanced down at her contently closed eyes when they kissed, she was actually enjoying learning the map of his face. She inched back and moved in again, attacking his mouth slightly sideways this time and drawing her free hand across the worst of his unusual looks, the hole of his nose and the side of his face that hung down his jawline. She was eager to prove that the worst of him was wonderful to her. Eager to make herself accept it. Erik had to fight with his own body not to to jerk away. To escape from the thumb that rested on the edge of his gaping nose-hole, or the pinky that lifted the small flap of skin that made him look like melted wax. The lips that brushed his and pushed against his, willing them to part enough to let her tongue in a little bit. And he found himself letting his body obey her instead of him. His lips parted as well as his previously clenched teeth, and her tongue went into his mouth, tracing his teeth, tasting his breath and finding his tongue itself covered in scars as well. It was as if he had bitten his tongue so many times and so hard he had damaged it! Tears again ran hot down her face.

Erik pulled back as suddenly as the tears had come.

"I knew you would be frightened Christine, and that's okay...you're crying because try as you might I still scare you..." He whispered, almost choking on the the words as he embraced her, putting his horrid face behind her head so she didn't have to look.

"No...It's not that...I am crying because of something else..."

"Did I offend you with something other than my ugliness?" He asked, trying to keep the pleading from his voice.

"No...please stop saying such things. I am crying because you have so many scars, and I am positive..." She pushed on his shoulders so she could look him into the eyes. Inches away from his eyes and the vile face surrounding them..."I am sure you weren't born with the scars...They were given to you."

"Gifts, for a beautiful lad." He replied sadly, his stomach once again turning at the thought that she was looking at the face.. "Do they disgust you more than the haunted flesh?" He asked with his emotions raw.

"None of it disgusts me. Not once was my stomach turned, though my heart now races with forbidden joy that you of all people have let me see you." She replied. "Let us go sit and talk now..." She said, feeling that the moment for reveling should pass into a joyous mundane. Erik stooped for his mask on the floor, but a foot kicked it away and under the organ. "Please leave it..." Christine asked him. "If I am to be your wife, you shall have to get used to us eating our meals and talking our dailies without it on you." She told him.

"What does that mean?" He asked, as if he already knew the answer but dare not believe it.

"Monseuir-"

"Erik..."

"Erik...I want to be with you now, more than ever. But only if you can be your true born and raised self for me."

He said nothing in reply. Christine moved to the doorway which lead to the sitting room. She had much on her mind.

Erik stood. Ten feet from his mask, under the organ, and ten feet from the sitting room door where Christine beckoned him in. He had to chose between many contrasts. His past and his future, fantasy and reality...light and darkness. He needed to decide if he was always going to be the contradiction.

He made is choice in one swift motion. His hand snapped outward into the shadows...

And met with her expectant one. He would choose this, even though it wasn't comfortable, it was comforting.

Christine knew his decision, and not a word passed between them about it. She would let his mind wander while they sat in silence (although she had wanted to 'talk') And she would gaze at him. She would gaze, but not stare. Staring was judging. Gazing was to learn, to see and to seek. She would be together with him. The real him. Not a mask.

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Thanks so much for reading. A post-disclaimer, I do NOT own phantom, erik, Christine, the mask, the organ, the lake, or any other things involved here. I borrowed them on a whim of inspiration.

Well if you know what you think please review. I like the pos and neg both. But please, it's very not cannon.

Oh, It isnt listed as complete. I dont plan n writing more, unless somehow this peice of AU sneaks up on me and bites me. I will leave it open to do that (grumbles even though it made me get only two hours of sleep before a work shift.)

Peace muh luvs.

PS: I like Christine nosey.

PSS: I like Erik's lack of a nose.

I'll shut up now. Again. Review.


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